The graphic below, along with the following blurb, appeared in my Facebook feed this morning:
“Gen Z men feel hated by Gen Z women so they are seeking less ‘toxic’ relationships’
Kara Kennedy argues that frustration in modern dating is pushing some Gen Z men towards older partners, in search of what they see as more stable relationships”
The author of the article is one Kara Kennedy, of The Independent, a news site that is often grumpy in the typical British fashion.
Cougar fever seems to hit the mainstream media every ten years or so. Back in 2009, The Huffington Post loudly declared: Cougars And MILFs Rule! 40 Year-Old Women Are WAY Hotter Than 20 Year-Olds!
The above HuffPost article is 17 years old; but it could have been published yesterday.
There are a number of reasons behind this recurring, predictable media trend. The first is that women over the age of 35 tend to dominate the senior ranks of journalism. In other words, there is a great deal of wishful thinking involved here.
But there is also a certain degree of reality behind it. After all, this is a “meme” that goes all the way back to Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and The Graduate in 1967 (the year before I was born).
Remember Rod Stewart’s song “Maggie May”, back in 1971? That was the same thing.
Beyond pop culture, I suspect it goes back much farther than that, although there was a time when it wasn’t widely discussed in polite company.
As my above revelation concerning my birth year concedes, I am no longer a “young” man. But I was one once. I remember that state of mind very, very well.
Here’s the way it works when you are a young male. You are desperately horny and emotionally hungry for the company of young women, twenty-four hours per day.
But everyone out there is seeking the company of young women: other young men, slightly younger and older men, and men old enough to be those young women’s fathers.
The result is that in any demographically unaltered sexual marketplace, young males are a dime a dozen, and young women are solid gold doubloons.
This is not a “manosphere” conspiracy theory. It’s just observable sexual economics. Nor does it last. (Things balance out between the ages of 35 and 40.) But for a few years, young women are in the catbird seat, and they hold most of the cards.
And if you are a young guy, you can’t help noticing: there are all these women out there who are five, ten, fifteen…or maybe even twenty years older than you. Some of them remind you of your mom’s friends. But some of them, actually…are not too bad.
Many of them also seem to be a lot less standoffish and more approachable than young women in your peer group. Some of them seem to be genuinely interested in you. So nature, which abhors a vacuum, takes its course.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the older partner is the second choice, the runner-up, the consolation prize. A young man goes for an older woman because he can’t get what he is looking for with the younger woman whom he would naturally prefer—or at least not enough of what he is looking for.
Young men, moreover, are so overflowing with desire that very few of them are able to get “enough” of what they want from younger women. This is why almost every man, regardless of his age or generation, has an “older woman” story to tell. (Yes…I have mine, too.)
In other words, the “cougar trend” is not a “trend” at all. It’s a recurring pattern.
But we need to be fair here. The same is also true of the “trend” of younger women dating older men. There is just as much repetition of familiar tropes, and just as much wishful thinking involved.
I remember something I read back in 1981. I was 13 at the time, and one of the neighbor boys raided his father’s stash of Playboy magazines. There was a group of us that day, stereotypical Gen X latchkey kids with not enough supervision. We spent one summer afternoon reading about a dozen issues of Playboy.
Yes, I looked at the photos. But I also read at least one or two of the articles. I remember reading one article about the “trend” of college women dating more distinguished, more accomplished men in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. The author of the article claimed that college coeds were “sick of college guys who treat them like Kleenex”, and so they were looking for solace in the arms of older men.
Sound familiar? Keep in mind: I read this back in 1981. Forty-five years ago. Proof that there is really very little that is new under the sun.
But there is often a slightly new spin on these stories. Kara Kennedy’s piece claims that the most recent trend of young men going for older women is driven by the unique alienation between Gen Z males and Gen Z females. This alienation is the product of the Internet and the culture wars.
Is this a thing? Perhaps. But here in my neck of the woods, I meet a lot of ungainly, socially awkward Gen Z males who have somehow managed to stumble their way into romantic relationships with women their own age. I also meet many who are solitary. But it isn’t as if every young man had a girlfriend, without interruption, in 1990 or 1980.
Perhaps there is another explanation. There has always been a certain degree of tension between young men and young women. Both are learning to cope with new feelings, and both are navigating a supply-and-demand environment which (initially, at least) vastly favors young women.
The inherent tension between young men and young women leads to inevitable cases of resentment, misunderstanding, and alienation among the young. As a result, there will always be young individuals who are temporarily dissatisfied with what the youthful courtship marketplace provides for them, or seems to provide. And there will always be cougars (or randy older men) who are willing to step into the breach.
Those older men described in that 1981 Playboy article I read would now be in their 80s and 90s. The college coeds of 1981? They’re now in their 60s. None of this was invented by present generations.
I’ll conclude by circling back to Rod Stewart and his 1971 song “Maggie May.” Rod Stewart, who is now in his 80s, wrote “Maggie May” as a young man, based on his personal experience.
The lyrics of “Maggie May” describe a young man’s ambivalence at being involved with an older woman. From the very opening of the song, there is a sense that such a relationship is not the natural order of things, and that it comes with an expiration date.
This was the way it was for me. When I was in my early twenties I had a relationship with an “older woman.” The exact circumstances of how it came about are irrelevant here; but it adhered to many of the common tropes.
Long story short: I ended up parting ways with the older woman when I struck up a relationship with a woman who was a few years younger than me.
As Rod Stewart pointed out more than fifty years ago, that is the inevitable outcome. (And yes: many older men get dumped by their young sweethearts, too.) A cautionary note for older female readers who get too hopeful about the latest, Gen Z-specific iteration of the cougar trend. Nihil sub sole novum.
-ET